


No Rest In Waking

by Syntax



Category: POKÉMON Detective Pikachu (2019), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: ADD Protagonist, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Discussion of Hunting/Fishing Laws, Emotional Support Pokemon, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Homelessness, Housing Discrimination, Implied/Referenced Consumption of Pokemon, Implied/Referenced Depression, Implied/Referenced Euthanization of Pokemon, Internet Piracy, Mentally Ill protagonist, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pokemon From Other Regions As Invasive Species, Pre-Canon, Rymesona, Self-Insert, Worldbuilding, autistic protagonist, except not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-04-06 23:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19072672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: Trying to move into a new place in a new city is already hard; how much harder do you think it is when your partner is a proximity hazard?orWhat do you think the housing laws are like in Ryme City?





	1. Falling Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> i accidentally published the whole ass document i was working on instead of just saving the changes to the first chapter and after frantically copying everything to a backup and deleting what i'd published, i decided to just say fuck it and publish the prologue. chapter 1 is mostly finished anyways, and i've got a good idea of where i'm going with all this now.
> 
> and i know it's cringey to give yourself a legendary pokemon but like i saw a bunch of rymesonas on twitter after seeing the movie and i refuse to live in any version of the pokemon world where i can't befriend darkrai.

Heavy grey clouds were hanging in the sky. They weren't raining just yet, but it seemed like at any moment the tension would break and a sudden downpour would fall upon Ryme City. Sitting on the front steps of the building that had housed their latest (failed) attempt at finding a place to live, Leigh felt that the picture was certainly fitting.

"Well," Leigh said, trying to sound a lot more casual than she actually felt. "So much for 'we don't discriminate based on pokemon partners.'"

The partner in question rested on the concrete next to her, one black arm wrapped around hers to offer emotional support as it looked out at the street. It chittered mournfully in agreement.

"Do you think they actually followed through on our email to make sure no one was asleep when we came by?"

More chittering. Less mournful this time and more irritated. That was a no, then. Leigh sighed.

"Of course they didn't," she said. She rose to her feet with a stretch, a (quite frankly embarrassing) series of crackles and pops sounding off internally as everything settled back into place. "We should probably get going before someone calls the cops or something. Do you want to stop by the coffee shop on our way home? I could really go for some hot chocolate right now."

The pitch-black pokemon rose with her, floating effortlessly in the air to meet its partner at eye level. It tilted its head slightly in thought. Then a nod, accompanied by more of the discordant chitting sounds its partner had become so accustomed to interpreting during the time they'd known each other.

Leigh smiled and began heading onto the sidewalk. "Cool. You wanna get a unovano while we're there?"

The response was a high pitched trill and a quick burst of excited nodding as the pokemon floated after her, causing Leigh to snort out a laugh.

"Alright. Come on, Darkrai. Let's go."


	2. Stage 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know those tags mentioning "euthanization and consumption of pokemon"? yeah this is the chapter where they come into play
> 
> i tried my best to make it as humane as possible (and am told i succeeded) but that's still something to be aware of if you're squeamish about that kind of thing

Ryme City was a lot different from Leigh's native Canalave Town.

(Well, for a certain degree of native, since she'd been born in The Under before it got buried, and her parents had moved to distant Canalave in hopes of giving their kids a better life in a safer region. Canalave might not have been her hometown, but it was the only one Leigh had ever known.)

It rained a lot more than in Canalave, for one. There was a kind of cold mugginess that hung over the city like the world's worst shawl. The streets of Ryme were narrower and more crowded, or perhaps they only felt that way because the amount of people and pokemon using those streets was much higher. The air had a distinct tang to it that she had a hard time getting used to. It reminded her of her grandmother's house in Agate Village on the various occasions the family had flown over to visit—like whatever pleasant scent the air might've had was being choked out by the smell of smoke and other human beings.

Thankfully, or perhaps not so thankfully, Leigh didn't exactly have to spend a lot of time in Ryme City proper on account of the whole, uh.

Housing. Situation.

"Darkrai, do you mind bringing the nets in while I get breakfast ready?"

A sound like distorted television static came in response.

"Kay, thanks!"

Specifically that they currently didn't have a house at all.

She double-checked the zippers and clasps on their tent (since while not all pokemon have fingers, some do, and the last thing they need is an ursaring getting into their food), a kalosian oven full of ingredients tucked under one arm, a cutting board and a tripod stand in the other. Satisfied, Leigh headed to the fire pit just a few yards away from their "front door" to start cooking.

In most places in Sinnoh (and probably other regions as well), there was legal protection offered to trainers who chose to camp outside of city limits for whatever reason—usually because they had a pokemon that would require specialized care to live in the city that its trainer was not currently able to provide. As far as Leigh was aware, these laws were mostly written with something like a steelix or a wailmer in mind. Something that you would genuinely be hard-pressed to provide suitable care for outside of an aquarium or a gym or something.

She figured something like a darkrai probably qualified.

Supposedly the minds behind Ryme City had set things up so that anyone could live anywhere with any pokemon. People and pokemon living as one—that had been the motto of the city since the moment the ground had been broken on the very first construction site. No battles, no balls (she was an absolute child and had to snicker every time that phrase was said), and no restrictions on who could and couldn't live in the city. It sounded like a dream, to be honest, and she'd saved up for over a year and a half to move here. When they'd first arrived all those weeks ago, Leigh had seen plenty of affordable apartments that boasted a willingness to work to provide any pokemon that stepped through the front door with the support they needed to live happily alongside their partner.

Every single one had changed their tune the moment Leigh walked into the building with a living nightmare following patiently at her heels. Like it was her fault that her partner had such a terrible ability. She just reported the landlord to the local HUD office and headed back to to the campgrounds to try again with the next building.

By this point their area of the forest was starting to look pretty lived-in.

She set up the tripod and inspected what remained of the fire she'd used to make dinner the night before. While what was left in the fire ring was just a mix of ashes and dirt (as was required by the pokemon rangers) the partially burnt sticks and logs that had been set off to the side after dinner was finished still had enough wood left to start the next fire for breakfast. Leigh set aside the heavy iron pot and its contents on a small outdoor table she normally used as a countertop and started stacking the wood for optimal burning. A lit match, a well-placed kalosian oven, and an empty jug later, there was now water heating up in the pot to make soup for breakfast.

An eldritch trilling floated through the air. She turned to see Darkrai gliding over with their cast net in its arms, along with two invasive red basculin.

If Leigh knew how to whistle, she absolutely would right now.

"Hoooooooo-ly _shit_ , look at the size of those guys!", she said, inspecting both of the exotic pokemon when her partner had gotten close enough. The red-striped fish were still squirming, but not as much as she thought they would have, and their eyes didn't seem to be as focused and attentive as other fish pokemon she'd seen before. "We should've checked in with the Area Ranger about these guys sooner. We could've been eating fresh fish this whole time instead of going into the city for chicken. Did you put them to sleep?"

Darkai trilled to the affirmative, a scratchy vibrato noise accompanied by a (slightly) puffed chest and a brighter glow in the pokemon's visible eye.

Normally, using the legendary pokemon's Dark Void move on another being outside of a friendly battle would distress it. Anything that fell asleep around Darkrai (or was already sleeping when Darkrai arrived) would experience nightmares due to its Bad Dreams ability. It didn't mean for such a thing to happen (and often took steps to keep it from happening), but it happened regardless. It was for this reason that Leigh was having a hard time finding a place for them to live in the city—convincing a landlord to allow a proximity hazard to anything that sleeps into a building where people sleep was a pretty hard sell.

Thankfully, while Leigh had no real experience with the nightmares caused by sheer proximity to the pitch-black pokemon (or if she did it was so long ago that she couldn't even remember it anymore), Darkrai had some measure of control over the nightmares it caused directly with Dark Void. These basculin were probably dreaming about being chased by even bigger fish, or fighting with each other over territory. Not an ideal dreaming situation to be having if you wanted happy, unstressed fish pokemon, but absolutely perfect if you wanted your fish not to suffer too much before you decided to eat them.

"Nice. Go ahead and set these down by the cooler, I'll get the club soda in a minute. We can call the ranger station after breakfast and let them know how many we got; they'll probably be happy about having less basculin in the lake to deal with."

She turned back to her cooking station to start preparing the meat of the soup when a clipped discordant noise came from behind her.

Darkrai was still floating in the same spot, looking down at her expectantly.

Leigh snorted.

"Okay, one second."

She wiped her hands off casually on her pajama top (and made a note to do laundry later because having raw meat juice on the clothes she slept in sounded like the opposite of a good idea) then tiptoed closer to her waiting partner, brushing away some of its white hair to plant a quick kiss on the pokemon's forehead.

"Thank you, Boo," she said in a sing-song voice.

The pokemon nodded, apparently satisfied with its thanks. Leigh gave it a playful shove.

"Alright, go on you big sap. Let's get this breakfast train moving already, we've got a lot to do today and not a lot of day to do it."

\-----

They sat together cross-legged on an old picnic blanket as they ate.

There was a nice breeze running through their campsite, bringing with it the smell of pine needles and wild berries that complimented their meal quite well. The day's breakfast, like most of their other ones, had been fairly simple on account of their food cooler only having so much room to store ingredients. A soup made mostly of water and aspear juice with some shredded chicken, onions, and a few 3-ingredient dumplings. Tasty enough, but it would've been better if they'd had veggies on hand though.

There were plenty of edible wild mushrooms in this neck of the woods (and Leigh knew for a fact that they were edible after checking in with the local area rangers), but.

_But._

As much as Leigh loved the flavor of mushrooms, the texture made her feel like she was going to throw up. And maybe that wouldn't be an issue if she was able to grind the mushrooms down first, but they couldn't exactly use a blender in the middle of the woods, and now matter how finely she minced and diced there would always always _always_ be horrible little chunks of pure sensory discomfort waiting in her food like mines in a field. Such was the burden of the autistic brain.

At least Darkrai seemed completely unbothered by whatever dietary woes its human partner had. Admittedly, Leigh had no idea what its diet or dietary restrictions even were, but it seemed to do just as well on just people food, so she was perfectly fine just giving it people food. It spared her the trouble of figuring out how to store any leftovers they might have.

They washed the dishes together, trying not to use too much water since there was only so much they had on hand without having to haul some in from the lake and dump a bunch of iodine into it or go to the supermarket and buy some of those big heavy jugs (which were not fun to carry home). Whatever soapy water was left when all the dishes were cleaned off got thrown on the fire and mixed in with soil and ashes like the rangers had shown her.

The rest of their clean water was reserved for drinking or bathing. Under no circumstances was she planning on taking a dip in the lake unless absolutely necessary.

Darkrai wandered off after everything was put away to check that none of their extra supply caches had been broken into during the night. With little else left to do, Leigh grabbed the club soda and headed for the cooler to take care of the fish.

Ideally, the pokemon rangers wanted every pokemon to live happily and freely, either with a caring trainer or with others of its kind out in the wild. Realistically however, this wasn't always the case, especially when dealing with invasive pokemon.

Not every trainer had the desire or the means to take care of an exotic pokemon just because it was somewhere it shouldn't be. And not every pokemon could just be gathered up and shipped off to its native region.

So when a pod of Unovan red basculin show up in a Sinnohan lake, too aggressive to appeal to most trainers, too difficult to transport overseas safely, and too dangerous to the local pokemon to just ignore, there weren't a lot of options on how to handle the situation aside from opening up the population to hunters and fishermen and hoping for the best.

It was maybe a little cruel, but what can you do?

Evidently Darkrai had set the net down next to the cooler, leaving the basculin to just flap around on the ground for a bit in their sleep. Leigh wasn't overly concerned about how they might be handling the open air—whether they were still asleep or not was her biggest concern at the moment, since if one or both of the fish pokemon decided to attack, Darkrai was too far away to take the blow before it connected. They certainly looked asleep though.

She gave one a light poke in the side of its belly. No response. Yeah, definitely still asleep. She unscrewed the cap on one of the bottles of club soda and started dumping it into the cooler.

One of the (many) differences between fish and fish pokemon was that fish pokemon possessed both gills and rudimentary lungs. While it wasn't ideal, or even recommended, to keep them out of the water for long periods of time, most fish pokemon could easily go an hour or more in the open air before needing to be returned to the water for rehydration. This was how trainers were able to bring something like a gyarados or a huntail into a grassy arena for tournaments with no ill effects to their pokemon (aside from somewhat limited mobility).

Lungs or not, however, all fish needed to breathe. She'd heard that the club soda by itself would let the fish sleep through the process, but since the law required that all hunters have their pokemon use a sleep-inducing move on whatever they were hunting before making the final blow, there was no real way to test that theory without risking undue suffering on the basculin. Speaking of...

Leigh glanced back between the cooler and the two child-sized fish lying on the grass next to it, gears very slowly turning in her head as the relative high of getting free food while helping out the rangers at the same time faded from her mind.

Wait.

How, uh.

How heavy were basculin again?

There was a distinct possibility that Leigh had not thought this plan through well enough.

\-----

The cooler lid clicked shut.

"Thanks," she said, and the sound she got in response was distinctly unimpressed.

Basculin, as it turned out from a quick visit to _Ask Alakazam_ , weigh about 40lbs on average. In addition to being heavy as hell, it gave her an almost instant flashback to the hot summer days in Canalave, when her dad would make her and her brother clear out the last year's pine straw and put new straw down over the landscaping to help insulate the plants. They collected the straw in enormous trash bags, stuffed everything in until they couldn't stuff anymore, and dragged them over the curb where the recycling guys would collect them later to take to the city landfill. More than once her dad had shaken his head and told them to pack the bags more loosely.

_"These bags are picked up by the city,"_ he'd said, _"And the city's not going to pick them up if they're over 40lbs. If you can't carry them, they can't carry them, and they're just gonna leave them on the street."_

That number had been cemented in her head ever since then as the mark of something being Too Damn Heavy, even ignoring the fact that it was more than she could lift without assistance.

Back in the present though, she found a black claw idly prodding at the flab of her arm. Leigh practically jumped in surprise.

" _Hey._ Don't give me that. You know diddly darn well why we haven't gone to the gym since we got here."

The pokemon's visible eye was half-lidded as it looked back at her. Its head titled slightly as if to say, _yes, and **you** know diddly darn well that you're just making excuses._

Ugh.

She turned around and huffed. "Whatever. I don't have to explain myself to you. I'm going to go get dressed."

And get dressed she did.

Even if the chances of someone seeing her were astronomically low, changing clothes was something she preferred to do in the tent rather than in the open air.  It gave her a sense of greater security, and it also gave her the chance to spend at least a few minutes to herself without Darkrai hovering over her, so to speak.  Not that she much minded the pokemon's presence.

In all honestly, Leigh could never truly be mad at her partner, and even the faux anger from earlier was gone by the time her hair was brushed and her shoes were tied.

When she opened the tent flap again there was a blue-eyed face waiting outside to meet her, and she smiled at it warmly.

"Hey, Boo.  Ready to get your vest on?"

A nod and an affirmative trill came in response, but by that time Leigh was already unzipping more of the tent to let the pokemon's bulky frame inside.

The vest in question lived on top of Leigh's suitcase with the other clothes so that they couldn't lose it.  It was a red-and-white strappy contraption with a few pockets on the sides for emergency items and a large pokemon center symbol (well, the latest version of the pokemon center symbol) right above the heart.  A service pokemon's vest.  

The sheer range and variety in pokemon meant each vest had to be custom made for each pokemon, but that didn't mean they were comfy or easy to wear, or even easy to put on.  Managing all the straps and putting everything in place required all four of the hands they had to offer.  But dealing with the vest was a necessity, and it was one they'd had to live with for almost two years now.

She took a step back to check that everything was fastened properly.

"Awwww, look at _you_ , all handsome." Leigh cooed.  She took another step forward to ruffle the pitch-black pokemon's flowing hair, not really caring about the vaguely objecting noises that resulted. 

So cute.  So handsome.  She must love her moody partner.

It is Law.

"Got everything?"

Almost at once Darkrai stopped trying to remove her hand from its head and started calmly patting down the various pockets on its vest.  Satisfied, it gave her a quick thumbs up.  She returned the gesture with a smile.

Leigh grabbed her backpack from one of the tent's inner corners and slid her arms in, having already checked last night that all her books and essentials (phone, wallet, sketchbook, pencils and sharpeners, gaming device, solar charger, water bottles) were in order before heading to sleep.  Everything was in place.  Time to finally go out and start the day.

"Okay, so here's the plan," she said, heading out of the tent and back into the open sunshine. "First things first, we're heading to the library to drop off those books from last week and get some work done, then we have to swing by the supermarket to pick up some more rice for dinner.  After that, we—oh shit, right, _laundry_ , okay hold on NEW PLAN—"


	3. Stage 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> legend has it that the founder of snapcam took a picture of mew on pokemon island, but most people dismiss it as just a rumor since he claimed to be in some kind of alternate dimension at the time.
> 
> quick warning for any that might be bothered by it—leigh has what would probably be classified as a minor meltdown in this chapter. or at least the first stages of one.

Creating libraries, Leigh thought, was the greatest thing that mankind had ever done.

She smiled at the little bell sound that chimed through the building as the front door opened, the smell of people and books and conditioned air flooding right past her as she walked in, Darkrai trailing dutifully after her.The muted green carpet felt welcoming to her, as did the rows upon rows of books and computers waiting to be used by anyone that needed them. There were a few children reading manga with brightly colored covers by the windows, what were probably college students sitting at a table and pouring over papers, an old man in an older chair reading the newspaper... Leigh took it all in with the smile still on her face.

If they couldn't find a home just yet, the library would be a perfectly acceptable replacement until then.

Oh, and from the head of blue hair sitting over by the front desk, it looked like her favorite library assistant was working today too! Nice!

Leigh almost ran up to the desk. Almost, because there was no running allowed in the library.

"Hey Marianne!", she chirped, drumming her hands on the checkout counter. "I didn't know you were working on Tuesdays now. Did someone call out or something?"

The woman at the desk—Marianne—glanced up from the forms she was working on through her blue-dyed hair.

"Oh, hey. Yeah, I got switched to a new schedule this week since one of our other guys quit. Lucky for me, Tuesdays are when the witch children come in to read with the kids, so I was coming in anyways. Now I'm getting paid for it."

"Dope. Speaking of the girls," Leigh said, very unsubtly looking every which way around the library trying to catch sight of two particularly fuzzy faces, "Where are they? I don't see them."

Marianne stuck her thumb out to the side. As if on cue, a pink and white muzzle popped up over the desk.

" _brrrrrie~?_ " the sylveon trilled.

Leigh had to physically restrain herself from making a similarly high-pitched noise.

Marianne's sylveon hopped up on the counters (no easy feat considering it was three feet tall) and nuzzled its head into Leigh's awaiting palm. The fairy-type was purring in seconds. So soft. So cute. Truly this was bliss.

She heard the sound of a zipper opening behind her. Leigh glanced back to see Darkrai casually pulling their library books out of her backpack. You know, the thing that they actually came here for.

"Oh. Sorry, Boo." she said, smiling sheepishly.

The pitch-black pokemon gave her a curt noise in response. It kept its visible eye (and probably its less-than-visible eye as well) trained on Sylveon all the while it was retrieving books. Leigh suddenly realized that Darkrai had never been so close to a fairy-type before. She turned around and grabbed the books from its arms.

"Hey," she said. "Hey. Darkrai. Look at me, bud. Look—you're not looking, _look at me._ Sylvie's perfectly fine. See?"

She gestured back at Sylveon. Who was staring right back at Darkrai, fur rising on end and ribbons held rigidly still. The gentle purring had stopped. Okay, maybe not so fine. Uhm...

Marianne thwapped her partner's nose with a finger. It let out an adorable (but offended) squeak.

"Hey," she said. "Cut that shit out. You aren't big enough to box with the nightmare god, and you _will_ get your sparkly pink ass handed to you if you try."

Slyveon shook itself violently in response, flattening out its fur and repositioning its ribbons. It let out a harrumphing noise and scampered off of the desk out of sight.

"Mind handing me those books?" Marianne asked, completely unaffected by the sudden staredown.

"Oh, shit, right. Uhm, here."

"Thanks."

Leigh leaned over on the counter as Marianne worked, idly watching watching the motions of the scanner. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Darkrai float over to look at the books on display along the walls. Or maybe it was looking for Sylveon? Who even knew.

"You know," Leigh said, "I don't know if Sylvie would get beat up. Darkrai's not much of a fighter. He'd probably just put her to sleep and then leave before she wakes up." Leigh said.

Marianne snorted. "You say that as if anything other than absolute victory isn't a loss in Sylvie's eyes."

"Yeahhhhhhh," she drawled.

Then Leigh noticed something that completely squashed whatever it was that she was going to say next.

"Oh, hey! Your tattoo's all healed up now!"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Check it out."

Marianne, as a matter of fact, had many tattoos. Some that Leigh had seen on prior visits (which was actually how they'd struck up a conversation and gotten to be friends in the first place), and some that Leigh had only seen in pictures on Marianne's phone. There was a skeletal mermaid on one shoulder, her sylveon and umbreon walking together with their tails intertwined in a heart on the other, Lunala wings dominating most of her back, a spade on her wrist in ace flag colors...

This new one was heart-shaped, and went from just below the collarbone to well underneath what was socially acceptable for Leigh to ask to peer down Marianne's shirt. Gold, with a silver crescent moon and several different colored gems in the center; rainbow wings stretched from shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the heart. The design was gorgeously rendered, but it took Leigh a bit to recognize what she was looking at.

"Is that from _Tsuki & Tsuki_?" she asked.

"Yup. Would've gone with something from _Cutie Ribombee_ or _Sailor Ceres_ , but the moon magic compact is just _iconic_."

Marianne smoothed out her top, sending the golden compact back into its fabric prison. "I've gotten a good amount of compliments on it so far. Also got shit from my roommate, but that's just because he's from Kanto and thinks only criminals have tattoos."

"Wow. Fuck that guy."

"Yeahhhhh. Anything else you were here for other than just books?"

"Mooching off the wifi again," Leigh said, shrugging in a sort of 'what can you do?' manner. "Gotta get some work done and my laptop's still in the repair shop."

"Hey, you don't gotta justify yourself to me. Library's public for a reason. Mooch all you want."

Leigh called over to Darkrai (who was rather keenly looking at a children's cookbook) and waved her goodbyes to her friend as they headed up the stairs to the computer area.

A few minutes later an umbreon gently padded up to the front desk carrying a thick folder in its mouth. Marianne gave the moonlight pokemon an affectionate head rub as she took the documents.

"Thank you, void child."

" _briii—!_ "

\-----

First things first though: log on to _Snapcam_ and upload all the pictures of Darkrai she'd taken since the last time she headed somewhere with free wifi.

Which was. Not a small number of images.

Though not exactly what some might call a "dedicated snapper", there were a lot of moments where the pokemon did something funny, or shaming-worthy, or just plain too adorable not to take a picture of (and that last category was the biggest one because her partner was a certified cutie pie). She could hardly help it. Something happened and she just had to take a picture. She _had_ to.

Like when they were watching _Pretty Knights Tsuki & Tsuki_ the other night, how could she just sit back and _not_ record Darkrai's expression when Tsukiko's partner darkrai Nocturne showed up on the screen, knowing that the pitch-black pokemon had probably never seen itself depicted as a hero before?

(Albeit for a given value of "hero" since personality-wise Nocturne was kind of a jerk in all the episodes she'd seen so far, but whatever.)

Leigh spent the next probably ten minutes sitting in the computer chair, bouncing her leg against the chair cushion, scrolling through all her pictures and adding fun little captions to them as she uploaded them to her account and set everything to run on a queue for the next few days.

That done, she set her phone down, cracked her fingers, and keyed her log-in information into the computer. Time to get some work done.

Officially, Leigh's job was as a part-time "community manager" for an indie game company from Orre that was trying to branch out into the Sinnoh market. Unofficially, her job was a whole lot of things since the pay wasn't really all that great and being homeless was surprisingly expensive. Most of her money actually came from the _Snapcam_ account, since between ad revenue and scientist types asking if they could license some of her pictures for academic papers, there was a fair amount of profit to be found in pictures of rare and poorly understood pokemon doing cute things.

Apparently the scientific community at large wasn't fully sure of whether darkrai had a mouth or not until she'd posted a video of her partner blepping. That had been an interesting day.

She had a book of poetry published a year back when she was living in Canalave that was doing...Okay? Ish? Not exactly a bestseller, but it still brought some money in so she was working on a second one. She had some patterns selling on Sketch Society (which also didn't make a lot of money but at least made some), a few commissions here and there (pen and paper only since you can't use a tablet in the woods), some short stories she was trying to sell to anthology magazines...

At some point a few months ago, Leigh realized that if she didn't have Darkrai helping her go to sleep at regular hours and getting her through the really rough spots where she just wanted to crawl in a hole and stop existing, she probably wouldn't be anywhere near as functional as she was. Trying to juggle everything all by herself seemed more like a nightmare than having one with her.

Roughly half an hour into starting up her work day there were about four different windows opened on the computer screen—the player forums for _Trick Room Games_ , a text window of a half-written sonnet, an email to her boss about the amount of totally-not-botters complaining about their anti-botting measures, and the _ComicbookCliche_ 's page for one of Diantha's old movies, which she was skimming through in between doing everything else. It was easier to keep her focus on the task at hand when she allowed herself to wander.

The only reason she didn't have music playing as well was because her headphones were broken and she wasn't about to start blasting Almian metal in a public library for everyone to hear.

Darkrai was resting casually in the chair next to her, for once not floating in place but actually sitting down with its stilt-like legs crossed politely, watching the other inhabitants of the library as they went about their business. She'd picked a spot with a clear view of the front door through the safety rails, so they were in a prime spot for the curious pokemon to go people-watching. Every now and then it would tug on her sleeve and point out some cute pokemon in the window, or down on the first floor.

Around the time they hit noon, there was a surge of new people heading into the library. Mostly little kids coming in with their parents since the bigger kids were still in school for the day. There were a few teens coming in with them (probably to work on a homeschool project or look up something for their pokemon journeys) but from what Leigh could tell it was mostly parents and small children. She was puzzling out what the reason might be since the library usually wasn't this busy on any other day before she remembered that oh, _right_ , these were probably the kids who came to read to Marianne's pokemon, _duh_.

At half-past noon they dove back into the backpack to retrieve whatever snacks Leigh had stored away the night before. Darkrai popped chocolate-covered coffee beans into its mouth one at a time as it continued people-watching; Leigh had mostly paused her moderating efforts in favor of peeling a roseli berry. She held out a slice for the pitch-black pokemon wordlessly, and didn't even need to see it give her the same little head shake it always did before shrugging and tossing the fruit into her mouth.

Even if the answer's always no, there's no reason not to offer. She added another stanza to the growing collection of sonnets in the corner window.

Several emails and _ComicbookCliche_ pages later (did you know that Brycen Silvestro debuted in _Ultra Maximum?_ ) Leigh took a glance at the clock. Four hours.

Time for a break.

One of the (many) downsides of living in the woods was the shoddy internet service. Mostly they got around that by checking out a metric ton of books to read at home over the next few nights, or heading into the city to spend hours in internet cafes reading junk web articles or fanfiction or junk web articles about fanfiction. Leigh wasn't really much for tv shows, and the games she had for her _DualScreen_ usually didn't need an internet connection to access all the features. But you know what?

Sometimes you just gotta watch some anime.

Which in her case meant sometimes you just gotta torrent some anime to watch on your handheld later because like hell was she gonna set up a tv and a dvd player in the middle of the woods. She was willing to set up a cheap projector for her phone out of a magnifying glass and a shoebox so they could watch movies on the tent's walls, but she wasn't willing to do _that_.

Leigh typed in the website's address and started scrolling through the series that were available. They were on episode nine of _Pretty Knights Tsuki & Tsuki_; her phone could hold probably the whole rest of the season if she got rid of all the other anime episodes stored on there—in which case farewell _Cleffa of the Stars_. She dug a hand into her backpack to look for the connecting cord and ohshitlibrarian.

"So," Marianne said, leaning against the computer desk with one arm. "Word on the street is a girl and her darkrai are going around just about every building in Ryme for whatever reason. You got anything to say about that?"

"...We're trying to find a place to live that's closer to the city." Leigh said, slowly removing her empty hand from her backpack and pointedly not mentioning where they were living now.

"Having troubles, huh?"

Leigh paused. After a moment she nodded, and tried to stifle the feeling that she'd been caught doing something much worse than minor piracy.

She looked around. There weren't as many people in the library anymore. The kids had apparently finished up their reading programs, and most of the other adults in the building were just minding their own business. With things this dead, what else was there to do but talk?

"Shit, if you can't find a place, I'll take you," Marianne offered. "I already get anxiety nightmares all the time, and it's not like my roommate will care."

"I'm more worried about your landlord, to be honest. I haven't seen one yet that didn't clutch their pearls when Darkrai came in." Leigh said bitterly.

"No dude, my landlord's chill. And even if they weren't, there's no reason you gotta tell them what your partner is."

Leigh—hesitated.

The thing that had been killing them on every apartment interview so far was that, while yes, you didn't specifically _have_ to tell a prospective landlord what your partner pokemon was, refusing to do so was considered in bad form at best. At worst you were considered to have something to hide, or were trying to defraud your new landlord.

While they didn't need to know whether a new tenant had a plusle or a skitty, a plusle could do more damage to the building just because of its electrical abilities. That made knowing what pokemon lived in what units valuable information in terms of discovering who had liability in the event something happened. If a pokemon caused damage to the building, or undue stress or (Arceus forbid) _harm_ to a tenant or worker, the only thing that kept the landlord from getting sued was being able to point at their records and say " _Look_ , I took measures to make sure that this pokemon had all the accommodations it needed, if it did something wrong, that's not my fault."

She'd even seen accounts where the police had requested information regarding a particular species of pokemon living in a particular area of the city because one had been in a crime and they wanted to narrow down their suspects (though obviously something like that was a fringe case and usually required a warrant).

But suddenly there was a certain nasty word there. _Accommodations_.

She'd finally been getting replies on some of the HUD complaints she'd submitted. Every single one of them said the same thing.

_"Owner unable to provide sufficient accommodations for pokemon."_

The people of Ryme City were supposed to be able to live anywhere with any pokemon. That was the dream that the city had been founded on. The reality was something quite different.

A building that couldn't provide a suitably large tank or a pond might be able to accommodate a primape, but not a walreign. While there was nothing _requiring_ that landowners provide elaborate (and often very expensive) environments for their tenants' pokemon to live in, doing so was considered a market standard, and landlords were often very upfront about which pokemon they would be able to provide for, and which pokemon would probably be better off looking for a different building. Some of the first they'd looked into had even offered suggestions of other buildings to check out.

However. That assumed that the pokemon was not considered _Dangerous._

Sometimes, a pokemon just wasn't considered worth the potential risk for a landlord, and they didn't feel like providing for something that might come back to bite them. It wasn't entirely legal, but it wasn't all that easy to _prove_ either.

I cannot provide accommodations for your tyranitar, it's too dangerous.

I cannot provide accommodations for your bisharp, it's too dangerous.

I cannot provide accommodations for your magmortar, it's too dangerous.

_I cannot provide accommodations for your darkrai, it's too dangerous._

The thought was that what one landlord considered too dangerous, another landlord would be perfectly fine with. If there was no such landlord? That was the tenant's problem, not the one who rejected them.

It didn't matter that all they needed was for a certain amount of space to be off-limits for sleeping while they were home. It didn't matter how simple it would be to set something up, find people with rotating schedules who would be home while they were out, find an apartment right above a room where people tended not to sleep anyways and put up signs, it didn't matter that they were completely willing to do most of the work just to not have to wake up in a _fucking tent every morning **and—**_

There was a gentle pressure on her shoulder. Something warm. Pointed at the tips, but not pointing, settling easily just under her collarbone.

Leigh felt herself almost slow down. Almost. Even if she hadn't actually gone anywhere. Still in the library. Still in the computer chair. She looked off to the side to see what the feeling was coming from.

Darkrai looked back at her, a soft glow in its visible eye. The hand on her shoulder squeezed, ever so slightly.

Leigh vaguely became aware of a hot wetness under her eyes that was threatening to fall on her cheeks. She took her glasses off and wiped her eyes clear with the sleeve of her hoodie. When her eyes were open again all she could see was Marianne looking at her.

Oh.

Oh shit, she'd never actually answered Marianne's question, had she?

"Uhm..."

Her mouth felt thick. What had Marianne said? What would—How would she respond without making a complete fool of herself?

"Isn't that illegal?" Leigh said, and instantly regretted it.

The other woman continued to stare at her.

"No." Marianne replied, slowly. "And even if it was, you're literally torrenting anime right now."

Fuck.

"Well, that's. That's different. I have dvds of this show in storage, I'm legally entitled to make a digital copy of something I already own if I want one."

"Are you okay?"

Leigh blinked. "What?"

"You just went from like, nothing to nuclear in the span of like, two seconds. And don't think I didn't notice that your _service pokemon_ decided that it needed to step in. Are you okay?" Marianne pressed.

Leigh shrunk back somewhat in her computer chair, fidgeting. Her brain felt like it was full of fog, slower than usual and coming up stupid every time she tried to find something to say.

Darkrai chittered softly behind her.

"...It's just... We've been at this for weeks now, and it's hard not to take all the rejections seriously, you know?" She said eventually, already bracing herself for whatever biting remark or dismissal that was sure to come. Stupid. Stupid. Said too much. Only allowed to joke about things, not get upset.

"Okay," Marianne said, cutting off Leigh's train of thought. "Have you looked into the Dark Type Society?"

The what.

"The what?"

Marianne opened her mouth, reconsidered, then held up a finger in a "just a second" motion before clicking her tongue in the direction of the front desk. Maybe a half a second to a second later Leigh her the loud patter of many furry feet bounding across carpet as Sylveon and Umbreon came into view.

(Leigh could vaguely _feel_ Darkrai protesting the fairy-type's sudden appearance more than she could actually hear it, but that didn't mean she had any real understanding of what was happening.)

"Girls," Marianne said, "I'm gonna get one of the flyers from the back real quick, keep an eye on this one and give her some love, okay?"

" _brrrrie!_ "

" _briiiiii!_ "

She still had no idea what was going on anymore. Suddenly there were two adorable pokemon aggressively nuzzling at her pant legs. Okay.

The other woman came back a few minutes later, writing something down on a piece of paper before reattaching her gel pen to her lanyard and handing it over. Leigh stared blankly at the page, both seeing quite clearly what was on it (some large text and several clip art pictures of dark-type pokemon) and being completely unable to comprehend any of it.

"Dark Type Society," Marianne said. "It's this group dedicated to helping out dark-type trainers and teaching kids that they're not as scary as they think."

Oh..?

_Oh!_

Leigh practically felt everything click back into place in her mind.

"You mean like the Poison Patrol?" she asked. "I've seen their videos on the _Daily Delibird_. They do, like, educational programs to teach people about poison types."

"Yeah, pretty much. But they also do like fosters and rehoming stuff that I think might be right up your alley. One of the guys that came in here a few weeks ago to do a program had a hydreigon with him, and if he can find a place that lets him keep something like _that_ , they can probably help you find a place that'll let you keep Darkrai."

Leigh leaned back in her computer chair. She saw Darkrai lean over out of the corner of her eye, and handed the flyer over so the pokemon could get a closer look. It would probably be a while before she could cognate well enough to read it.

She just kept thinking about the possibility it offered.

"You sure?" Leigh asked.

"It couldn't hurt to try," Marianne answered. She glanced back at the monitor. "You should probably wait until your laptop is fixed to do that. Not saying I don't believe you or anything, but. Y'know. _Cops_."

Leigh instantly scrambled to exit out of the website. When everything was powered off, she—

She honestly debated giving her friend a hug or not.

And then she just did it. Jumping to her feet (to the annoyance of Slyveon and Umbreon, who were still busy nuzzling her legs) and wrapping her arms tight around Marianne's shoulders. Maybe tearing up a little again because she had every right to still be at least a little emotional right now. After about half a second or so, she could feel the other woman return the hug.

...

"So anyways," Marianne said.

"Anyways," Leigh repeated, awkwardly pulling her arms away for fear she'd hugged too long.

"Just give them a call or something and ask if they know some place that's good for taking in dark-types, and see where you can go from there. If that doesn't work, my number's on there too and my offer still stands. You good?"

She felt positively giddy.

"Yeah. Yeah I think we're good. I jus— _thank you._ "

"Alright. I gotta get back to work before they start wondering if I got trapped in the elevator. Again." Marianne said, pointing her thumb back at the front desk, "So I'll talk to you later. Let me know how it works out, okay?"

"I will!" Leigh said. She practically shouted it, actually. She couldn't believe it.

Dark Type Society. _Dar_ -type Society. Dar-Ty-Sy. DTS.

DTS.

Leigh kept those three letters running through her mind like a mantra as she packed up her things and sling her backpack over her shoulders. DTS. DTS. DTS. This could be their big breakthrough. This could be everything they needed to finally make it in Ryme City.

DTS. DTS. DTS.

"Darkrai come on, we gotta get moving! Take the flyer with you, okay?"

Affirmative chittering.

She rushed out the front door like there was a pack of houndoom at her heels—

_DTS DTS DTS DTS._

And immediately forgot whatever it was she was thinking about the moment she stepped on the sidewalk.


	4. Stage 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> making up trademarked names is fun. you will be seeing more made up trademark names in the future.
> 
> pokedollars/pokeyen have been represented here with the ruble symbol because eh it's close enough.
> 
> another reference to eating pokemon here, as well as a more vivid freakout, so fair warning.

Darkrai had, by some small miracle, still been holding on to the flier when it floated out of the library doors after her, which did wonders for preventing yet another meltdown so early in the day. The last thing Leigh needed was to start crying in the middle of the sidewalk because she forgot something.

Again.

"So," she said, lounging on a park bench twenty minutes, five city blocks, and a quick detour to a shave ice cart later, "Mind handing me the flier again to I can punch the address into my phone?"

A cheerfully discordant warbling came right next to her as Darkrai opened up one of the pockets on its service vest (pockets being a standard feature on all service pokemon vests due to the need to carry return addresses and/or important medical information in the event they get separated from their partner) and pulled out the colorful sheet of paper. The sound was slightly muffled on account of the pitch black pokemon having a mouth full of delicious syrupy ice, because there absolutely was no way that Leigh was going to buy herself a snack and not get her partner pokemon one too.

"Thanks, Boo."

Clipped static.

Leigh checked out both sides of the flier for information to make sure there wasn't like, some hidden clause disbarring them from using the services that Marianne hadn't been able to catch before handing it to them. 'No darkrai allowed because because fuck you in particular', though obviously the wording would have been more professional and not actually aimed at her in particular. There wasn't anything, thankfully, but she did end up staring at the glittery pink phone number on the back for a good thirty seconds before remembering oh, right, Marianne.

She added the number into her contacts and sent the library assistant a quick photo of Darkrai trying to get the last few precious drops of syrup out of the shave ice cup with the little wooden stick it came with. The text she got back about a minute later read "AAAAAAAAAAAAA" with a long string of heart emojis at the end. Truly this was communication at its finest.

There was another, less mysterious phone number on the flier, which Leigh saved to her phone but did not call because she did not remotely have the courage needed to make an important phone call right now, but she did input the adjoining street address into _Ask Alakazam_  to see how far away it was.

Which.

Turned out to be really far away.

Like on the whole other side of the city far away.

Oh dear.

For a normal, non-homeless person, Leigh imagined the distance one would have to drive would be a minor inconvenience at worst. It would take, what, maybe an hour? Tops? Maybe an hour and a half if they didn't have a car and had to rely on the city's public transportation.

Leigh: 1, did not have a car due to lack of funds, 2, could not get a car due to lack of car insurance (which she could not get due to lack of home address), and 3, was effectively banned from the city's public bus system because pokemon that presented an active hazard (including psychic hazards) to other passengers could not be allowed on the bus until the hazard was neutralized. And if Bad Dreams could be neutralized they would not be having this much trouble finding a house.

So if she wanted to get anywhere in the city, that meant she had to walk—which Leigh didn't need the street map's helpful walking time estimates to know that that was _way_ too far a distance to travel on foot—

Or she had to _bike._

Now. Leigh did have a bike. It was how she'd gotten to the library earlier. It was a very shitty bike, but it could handle the dirt paths leading to the campsite as well as the concrete and asphalt of Ryme City, which was really all she needed it to do. She used that bike a few times a week to get in and around the city.

Leigh also never actually learned how to properly _ride_ a bike, so attempting to do so was basically like putting her life in the infinite hands of Arceus every time she needed to get anywhere.

She heard a low trilling from the other side of the bench and instantly reached out with her free hand to run her fingers through Darkrai's ethereal hair. The soft texture and repetitive motion helped pull her out of her own head and back into the real world. She still kept staring at the map on her phone screen though.

"We're going to have to plan the whole day around this trip, basically." Leigh said eventually.

More chittering came in response, as did a black clawed hand slowly reaching for her phone. She changed the angle of her hair petting and added some light scritches against the pokemon's scalp, eliciting a delighted rumble of static. Nosy little pokemon.

A few taps on the phone screen brought up the names of stores and businesses in the area around the Society building.

Mostly practices of some kind—lawyers, family doctors, a few mental health places that honestly she should probably look into at some point, later, eventually, when she had things to talk about other than 'hey so living in a tent is admittedly a step up from where I was before, but like it's still not very good for my mental health.' She kept tapping and scrolling and scritching, trying to form an itinerary in her mind.

What did they need done? What could they do on the way there to justify the distance traveled? Sure, the trip to the Society building itself was _incredibly_  important, but spending so much time and energy just to do one thing felt so wasteful that it didn't even register as an option.

So what needed doing? They would need to do laundry again soon, and there was always the need to buy groceries. Biking through the city both ways would take— _okay add all the time it takes to even get to the city_ —probably over four hours. They were definitely going to have to get some lunch, possibly dinner too before going home. So she'd need to budget that and look for cheap places to eat.

Actually, could they get a taxi? Once the thought occurred, Leigh felt like simultaneously the biggest fool and the smartest god damn person on the planet. She'd never considered a taxi before. They'd never needed to go far enough to justify using one before. How much would the travel fare cost?

A few minutes of fiddling with taxi fare calculators later had Leigh hunched over on the bench with her head in her hands and a pair of pitch-black arms wrapped around her shoulders while her confused partner made somewhat alarmed comfort noises.

So. Back to Plan A.

She lifted her head up a little to just stare blindly at the people and pokemon walking on the other side of the park, their lives and their problems practically a whole world away from hers. She breathed deeply through her nose. She closed her eyes. Made a decision.

She got up from the bench.

"You know what?" Leigh asked, picking up her empty shave ice cup and dropping it in the trash, "Fuck it. Let's just think about this tomorrow. We've still got shit to do today."

Darkrai floated soundlessly after her, depositing its own empty cup in the nearby garbage can before following its partner to their next stop for the day.

Time to head to the post office.

\-----

As expected, there wasn't much waiting for them at the post office aside from a long line and a few e-celebrities liveblogging on their phones. Leigh didn't recognize any of them (which wasn't surprising since she was terrible with names and faces) and she hoped dearly that none of them recognized _her._  Darkrai could easily be waived off as a zorua or zoroark having fun, but she couldn't. She had a recurring daymare of being approached on the spot by some vlogger she knew nothing about to do a collaboration or a project or some kind of endorsement, probably involving Darkrai since the pitch black pokemon's rarity was the sole reason why her _Snapcam_ had any followers at all, and having no way to refuse the offer without seeming like a colossal asshole since that's what happens when you spring things on people in public.

Thankfully she managed to reach her P.O. box without incident and even got a letter from the one friend she had back in Canalave alongside the cellphone bill, so, score.

After that crucible of anxiety was a trip to the grocery store in order to pick up something that would go well with the basculin they caught. Leigh glared at the bike sitting innocently outside the post office and prepared to start peddling.

She wasn't really too hung up on the possibility of the two of them not being able to eat all of the fish before they spoiled, since on account of coolers not exactly being the most effective method of refrigeration, the fish going bad before they could finish it was kind of an inevitability. At the same time though, it felt unfair to the basculin to not at least _try_  to finish everything. The fish gave their lives after all. Whatever they couldn't eat in time would get buried in the ground as fertilizer for the surrounding trees so it wouldn't be wasted.

She pulled up to the supermarket sidewalk, wobbling significantly more than she would have liked, with Darkrai hovering around right behind her in case she fell over on the dismount and busted something open. Again. Leigh made sure to thank the pokemon for its vigilance before locking up the bike and heading into the store.

She retrieved her phone from her backpack and pulled up their budget counter for the day while Darkrai flew over to pick up one of the baskets by the entrance.

"Okay," Leigh muttered, more to herself than anything else as her feet made their way over to where the pitch black pokemon was hovering, "So discounting the ₽1,500 for lunch, ₽600 for the shave ice, and ₽800 for water refills, that's... ₽2,100 that we have left to spend on dinner for today."

She looked up from the phone.

Darkrai looked back at her, like a deerling caught in headlights, claws holding a box of expensive poffins from the display table that was already halfway into the grocery basket.

"Put that back." Leigh said.

The pokemon hissed at her, but reluctantly complied. She rolled her eyes in response.

"Don't give me that. Those poffins are like half of today's budget, we can't afford that."

Disgruntled static.

"What happened to the poffins I got you last week?"

Silence.

"Darkrai I swear to Arceus if you fucking ate them all already."

More silence.

"You're not getting any more until next week," Leigh said, confiscating the empty basket from the pokemon's claws. Darkrai grumbled in protest, but she wasn't having any of it. Those poffins were supposed to last until Sunday. It was Tuesday.

They headed down the aisles with a minimum of fuss. Aside from the pitch black pokemon's weakness for bitter confections, Darkrai was pretty good at picking out the things they needed on the shelves. Which, considering their cooking and refrigeration options as well as the size of their budget, was mostly shelf-stable carbs. Rice, pasta, instant noodles, instant soup, sometimes bags of frozen vegetables if she felt like dicing them up extra fine to combat the sensory issues. Hell, even day old bread had a ton of uses. Darkrai picked a box off the shelves every so often and showed it to her, leading to either a shake of the head and a return to the shelves or a nod and another item in the basket.

Despite living in a coastal town for the grand majority of her life, Leigh wasn't a big fish eater and had very little idea of how to prepare them. Most of the fish she'd ever had had a strong "fishy" taste to them that no amount of freshness could rectify, so eventually she stopped trying. She had no idea what basculin tasted like, aside from that the ones they'd caught had been living in freshwater for some time and probably tasted like freshwater fish as a result. So what paired well with freshwater fish...?

Wait. Oh shit, wait, they could get _grits_. She made a mad dash to the cereal aisle to retrieve a can of the precious hominy grounds, much to Darkrai's announce at the sudden detour.

A few minutes later had them heading to the check out counters (or more specifically the _line_  to the check out counters) past all the displays of tempting desserts meant to wring a few more pokedollars out of customers. The sight of a greeting card kiosk spurred her memory, and Leigh dug into her backpack once again for the letter. Her efforts were rewarded with an envelope covered in doodles of dragons and pecha berries.

She leaned against one of the display tables (careful not to smush any of the cakes) and eased the envelope open with her thumb, a smile already on her face.

Pecha usually talked to her online via _Screech_ like the rest of their friends. The only time she bothered sending any actual mail was when she'd found an adorable and/or heartfelt greeting card at the store and decided to fill it with printed out memes. Which was objectively the best reason for sending someone a card as far as Leigh was concerned.

Speaking of adorable, the card inside was so cute that she had to physically restrain herself from squeeing in public at the sight of it.

The cover was an illustration of an espurr in an old raygun gothic-style space suit, with its equally retro rocket ship dominating the space behind it to the point where the card itself was more or less rocket-shaped. Leigh snapped the card open to see what was inside, catching the printed out goodies Pecha had included as they fell but otherwise paying little attention to them in favor of reading whatever message could possibly accompany such a cute cover.

"You're such a cool cat," the card's quirky bubble letters read, "that you're out of this world!"

The squee that erupted from her was too massive to contain, causing more than a few people standing in the long checkout line to look over and figure out whatever it was that must clearly be wrong with her. Leigh waved them off. So what if she was the only person she knew who got genuinely emotional at greeting cards? The damn things were a serotonin factory and she would take what she could get.

Now for the memes.

These had a retro theme to them apparently, all being memes that Leigh could remember from her first year of high school at the very latest, before she'd ever even met Pecha.

Some longpersians, a sirfetch'd looking for its sword in increasingly unlikely places, a few anime macros—she say a mudkip asking if she leiked it and had to stifle a wheeze. Tucked in at the end of the pile was a photo of—

Leigh stared at the photograph.

She knew that tree. She knew that fence. She knew the shape of the roof off in the distance, blurry and out of focus.

This was a picture of her parents' backyard in Canalave Town.

The shed was missing, she noticed suddenly. Normally you wouldn't be able to see it over the fence, but at this angle she should at least be able to see the roof, or the net or krabby trap her dad had put on it years ago as decoration. She flipped the photograph over.

Pecha's handwriting on the back. _"They tore it down."_

Leigh felt her throat tightening up.

The shed had been there for years. Her dad had built it while she was in middle school because her mom had gotten fed up with all of his tools cluttering their garage. At least, Leigh was pretty sure that was the reason. It'd been a long time ago and her memory wasn't the greatest. She knew her dad had moved a lot of his tools in, certainly, but he'd just gotten more junk to put in the garage after that. They'd had to get rid of all the tools one hot summer and find somewhere else to put them when she—

When she—

She and—

She couldn't see.

Everything was too blurry.

She brought a hand down on the display table to stabilize herself, center herself until the room stopped spinning, until she could breathe again, until she could _feel_ again, feel something other than that cold creeping numbness that was draining away all her energy, all her life, and _god_ she was back in college again getting yelled at in the car wanting nothing more than to just shut down just lie down just _stop feeling anything_ —

Black arms. Black arms, black arms, safety in black arms, safety in rumbling static, she wrapped her arms around a scratchy red-and-white torso and tried to ground herself in the gentle pressure of being held and the smell of ozone and biodegradable soap.

Try to come down. Breath in, breathe out, try to sync your breathing to the soft vibrating rumbles of a convex chest against yours, try to think of a happy place, try to empty your mind, don't bother doing them both at once you'll fail like you always do but the driving point was to _slow down_ and _breathe_.

Breathe in. Ozone and biodegradable soap. Plastic. Taste of copper. Dust from the campsite that still clung to them.

Breathe out. Bright lights overhead. Cold supermarket air. The dull pain of overuse in the soles of her feet. A cyan eye looking at her with love and worry.

Breathe in. Hot blurriness clouding her vision and streaking down her face. The hard surface of a red crest pressing against her chin. The weight of her backpack sitting incorrectly on her shoulders. A distant, rumbling noise that seemed closer and closer to where she was until she realized it was right in front of her.

Here. In the city. In the store. In a hug.

_Breathe out._

"Hey, are you okay?"

She looked up. A man's face looking back at her. Awkward. Concerned. Behind him maybe half a dozen faces looking in her direction. Awkward. Concerned.

She did not exist in a vacuum. She could be seen. She could be heard. She could not come undone in public without expecting questions afterwards.

The blurriness is fading from her eyes but she knows her face must be red and tear streaked as she looks back at this man and everyone behind him. Her mind feels sluggish again, worse than before. Much worse than before.

But inside her heart—

"Yeah," she said, still somewhat floating and disconnected from herself as she untangled her limbs to disengage from the hug, "Just going through some stuff right now. I'll be fine."

The man nodded in response and turned away. He might believe her. He might not believe her. He might not want to say anything. It doesn't matter to her right now.

Something brushed against her leg when she took a step just a little bit back towards Darkrai, causing Leigh to glance down on reflex as she wiped the tears off her face with the edges of her sleeve.

Cake.

Leigh could physically feel her brain short circuiting.

Coming down from that level of panic was never a simple thing. Coming back from old memories was never a simple thing. She still didn't know what day it was (she felt like it was a Tuesday but she couldn't be sure), or whether she was still living with her parents or not (she knew she was living in Ryme City but her memories were still stuck on the house in Canalave), or what money they were going to use to buy the things she knew they'd been meaning to (she had pay and she had savings but she was too used to having neither), but she knew one thing.

Cake was diametrically opposed to the world that made her cry. Cake was high school afternoons spent mixing something together from a box, or layering slices of apples one by one on a thick batter. Cake was the simple pleasure of dumping sprinkles on frosting, not enough, never enough, a tiny sea of colorful lines across a white plane of buttercream. Cake was making something for someone else, wanting to taste your own creation but sating yourself on the joy your recipient would surely feel at tasting it for you.

Cake was a happy thing.

Cake was a special thing.

Cake was not for her.

Cake was—

Actually.

The longer she stood staring at the display table and all the baked goods spread out on it though, the more something in her, maybe the part that had just been fried, started turning again.

Her mouth felt impossibly dry. Leigh tugged her water bottle from its pocket on the side of her backpack and took a long drink, still staring at the cakes on display.

Cake was for celebrations.

The shed being gone was a cause for celebration, wasn't it?

Black claws settled on her shoulder, and when she turned a white-framed eye was floating up ever so slightly higher to meet her on the same level.

Darkrai chittered questioningly at her.

It took her a few seconds, trying to remember what emotions felt like, but eventually Leigh was able to offer the pokemon a smile.

"I'm okay," she said. She gulped down a mouthful of emptiness. Still too dry for her liking, but better.

"I'm _gonna be_ okay." she amended.

The pokemon nodded. The claws on her shoulder were removed and extended, and Leigh took the offering in hand with a slight squeeze.

They bought one of the cakes along with all their other groceries that day. She managed to make it all the way home before feeling guilty about it.

\-----

Dinner passed without incident, which is honestly probably the most she could've hoped for to cap this day off with.

Leigh boiled some water and broth in the kalosian oven and dumped a bunch of grits inside, quietly mourning her lack of foresight in buying cheese as well. It would just have to be added to the grocery list for the next time they went shopping. She and Darkrai cleaned the fish together and dumped chunks into the pot as they came off the bone, the work going fairly quickly on account of both of them having hands capable of deboning, hers with a knife and Darkrai's with its claws.

(It was weirdly easy to forget how sharp her partner's claws could be when she was so used to the pitch black pokemon's usual gentleness, but at the same time it wasn't like Darkrai was unique in having such sharp digits. Leigh still had a scar on her chest where her mother's skitty had scratched her as a child. The cuts weren't nearly as deep as they could've been.)

Finding some place to store the cake was almost as much of a challenge as she thought it would be, since the leftover fish took up the grand majority of their cooler's space (not as much now that the heads and guts had been removed, but still a lot) and honestly storing cake with raw fish seemed like a terrible idea anyways. Several minutes of _Ask-_ ing _Alakazam_  later, she just ended up leaving the cake in its plastic container in the tent with the rest of their food. Cake could survive a few days at room temperature apparently, even if it was significantly better to keep it refrigerated.

Room temperature wasn't exactly something that existed in the middle of the woods though so they'd just have to eat it quickly. Maybe it'd even do her some good to be able to look forward to cake for breakfast for the next few days.

Leigh snacked on some of the leftover grits still waiting to cool off before they could be tucked away for the night. Evidently it'd been long enough since she'd last made grits that she forgot how much went into a single meal. Darkrai had already picked out the remaining bits of fish in their leftovers to keep them from spoiling overnight, thankfully, but they'd probably still need to finish it off within a day or two.

She missed refrigerators.

She missed all kinds of regular, mundane appliances that you don't really think about having until they're gone.

She missed being able to bake things. She missed microwaves. She missed hand mixers. She missed kettles and coffee makers and anything else she could use to make a cup of hot cocoa whenever she felt like it. They've got packets of hot chocolate powder mixed in with the other essentials of camp life, because she would sooner die than give up the loving taste of _Sweet Kiss_  for more than a month, but now if she wants cocoa she has to plan ahead and reserve some hot water from that night's dinner to mix with the cocoa powder later.

She'd gotten splashed with a lot of hot water since they came to the camp site.

After dinner came putting out the fire and mixing soil with the ashes and then taking some soap, a pair of flip flops, and a set of pajamas over to the designated shower tree, so identified by the plastic shower curtain tied to its branches with some sturdy rope to form a protective layer between the tree, herself, and the outside world, and the tank of sun-heated water over top of it all. The curtain was probably more important than the water tank though. Out in the middle of the woods or not, Leigh was not going to bank on the sheer unlikeliness of someone seeing her showering to try attempting it without some kind of curtain. Nu-uh. No way. That's how horror movies happened.

Roughly four gallons of water later she squeezed the excess out of her hair on the way back to the tent (which took a while since her hair wasn't long enough to squeeze all of it at once), more than thankful for the flip flops keeping her feet clean on the way there.

Time to scroll through total nonsense on her phone until bedtime. Leigh stepped into the empty tent and zipped it back up, happy to have the place for herself for the time being.

Darkrai had long since escaped from its scratchy service vest and was flying around somewhere overhead, eager to get rid of all the energy it had accumulated during the busy city day, and leaving Leigh to do more or less whatever she felt like doing without her partner's eyes boring into her. Not that she resented the attention or wanted Darkrai to leave (she would never want it to leave). It was just hard sometimes to exist in a space where someone was watching her and not feel like she was being judged. That's all. Darkrai would tap on the tent's canvas later to let her know when it was done flying, and Leigh would happily let it into the tent for the night without a single complaint.

And actually, while she had the time to herself to do whatever: now was probably a good time to look into the Dark Type Society's website.

Leigh situated herself cozily in the nest of comforters taking up most of the tent's floorspace and punched the Society's name into _Ask Alakazam._

The white light of the phone's screen seemed harsher than usual in the otherwise unlit darkness of the tent as she looked through the Society's webpages. There were a lot of pictures of dark type pokemon on the website, naturally. Mostly of species that didn't have a very good reputation among non-dark type specialists, like bisharp or absol. She caught a glimpse of the hydreigon Marianne mentioned in one of the pictures, but there wasn't much information on the specific pokemon documented.

She tapped on the "events" tab.

There were a few things going on this month. Some meet and greets with the various pokemon, some programs for kids and young adults in various places in Ryme City. One event caught her eye pretty quickly: an open house at the Cerulean Center. She'd been there before once when a band she liked had come to town. It was a pretty big building.

More importantly, it was a lot shorter of a bike ride than the main Society building.

And the event was only a few days away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leigh feeling like a genius for considering taxis and then hanging her head over how expensive taxis are came into being entirely because i remembered taxis exist and she had no reason not to use them. then i looked up how much a taxi would cost and i too, hung my head in despair. how do people in big cities survive.
> 
> looking back, i think part of the reason this chapter took so long to write is that before my hyperfixation switched (it has been on transformers since the beginning of july and i am both suffering and also writing two different fics for transformers animated right now) is that one of the major chunks of that chapter was one of the first scenes i ever wrote for this story, and i didn't know how to work around it when the chapter kept growing and evolving. so i got stuck, and then just... had little motivation to get unstuck when my brain decided to chase a different white rabbit and get its dopamine that way.
> 
> this chapter is actually a completely rewritten version of that chapter, with a completely different sequence of events even if it ends in the same place and has some of the same beats. i think it's worlds better than the chapter you would've gotten otherwise. and as befitting the wild and horrible whims of my ability to write fiction, i got it done in like two weeks after three months of radio silence.
> 
> oh, fun fact: the friend who is represented as marianne in this story actually started working at a library in the time between updates. neat huh?
> 
> EDIT BECAUSE I'M DUMB: LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL BOY I GOT FOR MY BIRTHDAY  
> https://66.media.tumblr.com/c4c8c27179cb2d70de4c17a4e4eaa224/05bc7b9f532ae04b-57/s540x810/3ca4b059c856cbcf13786e7c104db3f942315f12.png


End file.
